Thornhill Drive is one of the major streets in Oakland’s Montclair district. At 8:30 a.m. on weekdays, parents are lined up to drop their kids off at Thornhill Elementary School. The street is clogged with morning commuters queued up at the bottom of the hill, waiting to turn onto Highway 13.

Yet even with all the traffic at that time of the morning, two thieves were brazen enough to break into the home of an 89-year-old woman who lived near the busy intersection.

According to the police, the woman was at home alone Tuesday when two intruders kicked in the back door.

One of the men pushed a pillow down on her face. She kicked and pushed him until he stopped.

The burglars then forced her into a bathroom and shoved a piece of heavy furniture up against the door so she couldn’t get out.

They looted the place of jewelry and cash then fled.

The 5-foot, 100-pound woman remained trapped for eight hours.

A roommate discovered her at 5 p.m. Thankfully, she apparently didn’t suffer serious physical injures. She said she did not want medical treatment.

What if she hadn’t struggled with the intruder? Would the police be investigating a killing instead of a burglary?

What if like so many of our abandoned, neglected elders, she was living alone and had no one to check on her on a regular basis?

Who knows how long she might have remained locked in that bathroom?

Had someone not found her in time, she could have died there.

Imagine how terrified she must have been. The violation of her sense of safety.

How would you feel if she were your mother or grandmother?

Burglary may start out as a property crime, but it can very easily lead to a home invasion or worse.

When people talk about the public safety crisis in Oakland, they’re usually referring to the epidemic street killings in East and West Oakland.

The gunning down of Carlos Nava, 3, Hiram Lawrence, 23 months, and Gabriel Martinez, Jr., 5, all within 4½ months of each other, were such monstrous events that they made international news.

Yet there is another public safety crisis in the city’s more affluent hills neighborhoods that rarely makes the news.

For the past two years, there has been an alarming escalation in residential burglaries in the hills.

There have been so many home break-ins in Montclair that a police officer called it “burglary central.”

“They’re coming in the middle of the night, during the day. They don’t care,” says Carolyn Winters, a neighborhood organizer for the Montclair Safety and Improvement Council. “The word is out there are not enough police officers, so let’s go rip off the hills.”

Oakland’s police department is stretched so thin police are struggling to keep up with high priority, life-threatening calls.

Craziness like a man running down the street in broad daylight, armed with a shotgun.

A school on lockdown after a man opens fire at the police.

A woman shooting another woman downtown.

In 2010, then-Police Chief Anthony Batts informed the public that in order to respond to so many life-threatening situations with so few police officers, OPD would have to prioritize.

The department would no longer as a general practice dispatch police officers to burglaries — unless they were in progress.

Burglary victims were told to fill out reports online.

What kind of message did that send to criminals?

Things have gotten so bad in Montclair that residents banded together late last year to have Logitech install video surveillance systems at their homes.

Montclair has some of the most proactive neighborhood watch groups in the city.

Residents subscribe to a Yahoo group site that alerts neighbors to suspicious activity.

The Montclair Safety and Improvement Council regularly sends video of suspicious activity to an OPD officer who works closely with residents.

But none of it has been enough apparently to deter bold burglars.

Police have said that they will step up patrols in Montclair, but who knows for how long.

Angry Montclair residents are demanding action now.

“People are leaving saying, ‘I can’t deal with this crime,’ ” Winters says. “A crystal clear message needs to be sent that the city is losing Montclair residents who pay the taxes.”

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